The Jefferson City Jays and Capital City Cavaliers both got what they wanted out of Tuesday night's soccer scrimmage.
They actually got to scrimmage.
"It was a good match for us," Jays coach Scott Blake said after Jefferson City blanked Capital City 7-0 at Capital City. "We were pretty good with the ball and I think in the second half, we showed how good we can be with the ball."
The result wasn't unexpected. The Jays bring back a slew of talented seniors, while the second-year Cavaliers are still trying to gain their footing on the varsity level.
"For us, I think we got more out of it than they did," Cavaliers coach Travis Cairer said. "The more we can play against quality teams like that, the better we can build to be.
"You've got to play against teams like that to get the exposure to get better."
The Jays scored four times in the first half. Goals came from seniors Bassil Ahmed, Darby Hall, Breck McGrail and Ethan DuBois.
"We know we had the advantage of having a group of experience seniors against a group of juniors and sophomores," Blake said.
Toby Hughes, another senior, was in goal for the Jays in the first half.
Logan Barger, Ethan Blake and Ahmed scored in the second half for Jefferson City. Eli Chapman was in goal.
The Cavaliers will have just three classes in school this fall, with sophomores making up the majority of the Cavaliers' roster.
"The junior and freshman classes aren't nearly as big and so in practice, it's hard to get the competition we need," Cairer said.
While the Jays were happy to get the win, they also had some things they wanted to work on.
"We've had very few games this summer, so we need to work on all thirds of the field," Blake said. "Usually by this time of the summer, we've played at least eight games and as many as 12.
"This year, we'd played three before tonight."
Jefferson City has a goal to take something from every match during the summer. And with the short schedule, due to the cancellation of events due to the coronavirus, that's more important than ever.
"We don't wait for moments to happen in scrimmages like this, we create them," Blake said. "We tell the guys they can only play in the back half or the front half, they can only defend here and not here.
"We do things like that so we make sure we work on what we need to work on."
The Jays concentrated on ball movement Tuesday night.
"I thought we'd be OK defensively, so we wanted to work on the build up on the offensive side," Blake said. "In the first half, we worked on building from deep in our offensive end. The second half, it shifted to trying to build on the offensive end."
The Cavaliers got an eyeful of how good the Jays could be this season. And Cairer, who recently tossed a few changes into his system of play, was happy that happened,
"We talked before the game about if we had any lackadaisical play or bad passes or bad traps, this was a team that was going to exploit it," he said. "Honestly, playing someone as good as they are is a good thing for us because I can count on less than one hand how many teams we'll play during the regular season that's that kind of quality.
"When you're trying to learn a new system against that kind of pace, that kind of speed, that kind of talent, when you get to a lot of the other teams on your schedule, you should be ready."
Jefferson City, which had five players playing their first-ever 11-on-11 game, won Tuesday's JV short scrimmage 2-0.
"We looked OK and that was encouraging for the younger players," Blake said.
The Jays and Cavaliers have about a month to go before the start of the regular season.
On Aug. 29, the Jays are slated to face C.B.C. in St. Louis while Capital City is scheduled to play at Southern Boone.
The Jays and Cavaliers will meet in the regular season Sept. 1 at Eddie Horn Field.